We’re regulating social media to prevent another war — Lai Mohammed

Minister of Information and Culture, Lai Mohammed, says the call for social media clampdown in Nigeria is to prevent another global war.

Mr Mohammed, who has called for social media to be regulated in Nigeria, insisted that the platforms spread fake information.
“With fake news today and misinformation — I have always said here that the next world war will be caused by fake news,” he said while defending his ministry’s 2022 budget before the house of representatives committee on information, national orientation.

While recounting the means of disseminating information decades ago, the minister explained that Nigerians had deserted the old means by embracing the “unseen enemy,” social media.
“Information is not what it used to be, 20 to 30 years ago if the state or federal government had a television or radio and probably a newspaper, that was what we needed,” he noted.

“The people today, they don’t read newspapers, they don’t watch television — it’s social media. And it is most expensive; the most unseen enemy, they are there every moment, and until we go to the same battlefield with them, there is nothing the government will do that will seem right,” he said.